Vook co-founder Matt Cavnar has joined Broadway Video Ventures as general manager.
Steve Quinn joins the Perseus Books Group in the newly formed position of assistant director, specialty retail sales on January 26. Previously he was specialty sales manager at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Quinn will report to senior director, gift sales Eric Green out of Perseus’ Boston office.
At Crown/Hogarth, Alexis Washam has promoted to executive editor, while Nate Roberson is promoted to associate editor and Sarah Bedingfield moves up to assistant editor. Matt Inman has been promoted to senior editor for Crown Archetype and Three Rivers Press.
At Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, Sasha Illingworth has been promoted to executive art director. Saho Fuji and Tracy Shaw both move up to art director, while Maggie Edkins has been promoted to designer.
At Penguin Classics, Sam Raim has been promoted to assistant editor.
The Edgar Award nominations were announced Wednesday morning. Best Novel nominees included Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King; Saints of the Shadow Bible by Ian Rankin; Coptown by Karin Slaughter; and The Final Silence by Stuart Neville. The winners will be announced at an awards ceremony on April 29.
The AAP introduced a new logo and identity scheme that “captures the work of 21st century publishers using a clean, contemporary and versatile image.”
Effective September 2015, sales and distribution for America’s Test Kitchen will be handled by Penguin Random House Publisher Services. The company has self-distributed to the trade. CEO Christopher Kimball says, “When we reached one million cookbooks sold per year, we reached out to Penguin Random House to provide both the retail distribution expertise they can provide and a platform on which we could continue to build our book business well into the future. From our perspective, print cookbooks are a growth industry, not a legacy business.”
Sourcebooks announced an unusual title for April publication: The Institute of Culinary Education (ICE) teamed up with IBM to “explore cognitive computing and creativity in the culinary arts.” COGNITIVE COOKING WITH CHEF WATSON presents over 65 recipes, created by ICE experts and “inspired by unconventional ingredient concepts” generated by IBM’s cognitive computing system Watson, dubbed Chef Watson. They say those recipes “explode with irresistible new flavors,” after Watson helped the ICE chefs find new food and flavor combinations. IBM’s Florian Pinel says in the announcement, “To discover something new, be it a medical insight or recipe, requires insight into a large body of information and being able to use that insight to make connections and draw conclusions. Whether you’re working in the kitchen or the laboratory, Watson’s ability to reason and learn can help humans arrive at new discoveries.”
Martha Whitmore Hickman, 89, author of HEALING AFTER LOSS and the novel SUCH GOOD PEOPLE, died January 17 after a brief illness. A memorial service will be held in California on January 31.